Poverty measurement

The deprivation questions in the Family Resources Survey are asked annually and provide a way to track progress since 2004/05. Below you can see the changes in Northern Ireland during that period. The graph shows the proportion of persons living in households with incomes below 60 per cent of UK median income (before housing costs are deducted) who lack each of the items because they cannot afford it.

The Family Resources Survey (FRS) is a large-scale annual survey of the incomes and circumstances of private households in the United Kingdom. Sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), it collects detailed information on income and benefits, savings and investments, occupation and employment, pension participation, disability, housing tenure and carers. Since 2004/05, it has included a module on material deprivation that has been derived from the concept of consensual necessities to inform the choice of indicators and, in particular, the work of the PSE 1999 study.

The PSE Northern Ireland (PSENI) survey used the same refinements of the consensual method of measuring poverty used in the PSE Britain 1999 by carrying out further statistical analysis on the group below the threshold to exclude those who, though deprived, had higher levels of income. The PSENI survey found higher levels of poverty in Northern Ireland in 2002/03 than the PSE team found in Britain in 1999: 29.6 per cent of households were in poverty in Northern Ireland as against 25 per cent in Britain. Given that in the three years from the PSE Britain survey to the PSE Northern Ireland survey there had been rising prosperity, this finding is of considerable significance. It confirms that Northern Ireland is one of the most deprived parts of the United Kingdom.

In Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979) Peter Townsend examined relative deprivation covering a wide range of aspects of living standards, both material and social. He found that there were levels of income below which consumption and participation fell well below what might be seen as normal or acceptable in an increasingly affluent society and argued that this group should be seen to be in poverty. By clicking on the libks below you can download this seminal book. We have provided the full book, 1,216 pages, as one PDF as well as individual chapters and appendices as separate PDFs for download.

Please cite ‘Townsend, P. (1979) Poverty in the United Kingdom, London, Allen Lane and Penguin Books’ if quoting from this book.

Poverty affects different communities in different ways. In 2009, people living in deprived areas of Glasgow were invited to take part in a new Scottish initiative called The Poverty Truth Commission. As part of this process, they produced a series of short films about poverty and poverty-related issues.

Poverty affects different communities in different ways. In 2009, people living in deprived areas of Glasgow were invited to take part in a new Scottish initiative called The Poverty Truth Commission. As part of this process, they produced a series of short films about poverty and poverty-related issues.

This bulletin reports on OECD measures of inequality, the rise in income poverty, the final report of the High Pay Commission, fuel poverty, the Family Resources Survey deprivation indicators for Northern Ireland, HM Revenue and Customs child poverty measure, and the Child Poverty Act.

Children’s perceptions of life satisfaction are not directly linked to conventional income-based measures of poverty, says a research paper from Essex University.

The study looked at whether household income, household material deprivation and child material deprivation are associated with child life satisfaction. It was based on a sample of children aged 10–15 participating in Understanding Society, the new UK Household Longitudinal Study.

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PSE:UK is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. ESRC Grant RES-060-25-0052.